


Rhythm

by iridescentglow



Category: 504 Plan, Bandom, Empires, The Academy Is...
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-29
Updated: 2009-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:42:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentglow/pseuds/iridescentglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The more things change, the more they stay the same. Tom has lost the ability to make friends, but—15 or 23—he still has Nick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhythm

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this pre-Empires, when fandom was harboring under the delusion that Nick Scimeca might be in Tom's new band.
> 
> Thank you to callsigns for the read-through and encouragement.

Tom sits strumming his guitar. He's not really playing it; he's barely aware of what his fingers are doing. His hands move across the strings and… it's automatic, like the guitar could fuse with his skin and become part of him. A melody pushes out from the mess. It's something that's been in his head for a few days now, humming across his skin, making the tips of his fingers twitch. It sounds soft and soothing in the quiet room, but he can imagine it louder, played relentlessly in a much larger room and submerged beneath hoarse vocals.

Nick, who has been on his computer for the last hour, starts to tap the fingers of his left hand against the table. The thumb of his right hand bounces across the laptop's touchpad, twists, and bounces once more. Even though he's still looking at the screen, Tom knows the music's got him. The stranglehold effect of a good melody is what has always united them.

Nick's taps transform into a drum beat in the scene inside Tom's head. He closes his eyes, just for a moment, and feels the heat of the crowd, their exuberance as they surge towards his as-yet-unnamed band. He allows his fingers to go slack and the fantasy fades. Nick's fingers also become still. Nick's left hand flattens against the table, but when he meets Tom's eye, he smiles knowingly.

"You ever think—" Tom starts to say and then breaks off. His voice feels hoarse, ill-used. He and Nick have been together all day, (ostensibly writing songs, although it's not exactly a _structured_ thing,) and they've barely said two words to each other. Did he thank Nick when he pushed a Starbucks cup into his hand this morning, or did he just nod? Did he actually say, _this weather reminds me of being fifteen_, or did he just expect Nick to have had the same thought already, as they listened to the kids scuff by on the street outside?

He tries again. "You ever think you've lost the ability to make friends?"

It sounds stupid, hanging in the air around them, and he almost regrets breaking the embargo on speech. Nick rolls his eyes and Tom feels stupider still. Because, of course, Nick makes friends like he breathes. He's friends with the old lady who runs the Laundromat down the block; he gets Christmas gifts from a mechanic named Bobbo. Once, they passed a soup kitchen together and Nick ended up having a forty minute conversation with a homeless war vet. Nick still takes the homeless guy deli sandwiches when he's in the area.

"Tell me how many numbers you have in your pocket right now," Nick says, laboriously, like he's humoring Tom, but won't for long.

As a matter of fact, Tom has two numbers in his jeans pocket. One's a sound guy that he met at a show the night before; he said he could hook them up with some cheap equipment. The other belongs to a girl named Gemma, who wore green stockings and talked about Salvador Dalí the way other people talk about sex.

"Yeah, okay, I can _meet_ people. I can stand up and say, hey, I'm Tom Conrad, I'm in a band and… whatever. But _friends_?" Tom makes a single, forceful strum on his guitar. "I don't think I can do that anymore. The… gene or something is gone. I lost it somewhere."

"It's not a _gene_. It's more like an instinct."

"Well, I lost that, then."

Nick gives him a long, hard look, and then says dismissively, "You're crazy. And you're too young for a mid-twenties crisis, so shut up."

"You shut up," says Tom, but he laughs in spite of himself. He _is_. He's too young to feel this old… or _whatever_.

Tom thinks he's come out of Academy with surprisingly few issues. He's not fucked up about it. He's not bitter. But they're two years of his life that seem to cling to the back of his neck; a cold, clammy insinuation that's he's not so good at… connecting with people. A part of him still wants to shake Mike and Bill (_Mike, mostly_, Tom thinks blackly) and say, _I tried to be your friend, why didn't you let me?_ It all feels a little bit pathetic; a stickiness that he can't rub clean.

With difficulty, he forces his mind back to this moment, _right here_. He's been fighting a perverse combination of lethargy and restlessness all summer; it's a feeling so specifically _teenage_ that he thought he'd shed it years ago. The melody is back in his mind; it skates on the surface of his thoughts, adding a counterpoint to the feeling. In this room, even with the window open, it's ever so slightly too hot. It's the kind of weather that makes you want to sit and sweat. He hears the sound of kids outside again, but this time, they're younger—seven or eight, maybe. It gives the impression that the world outside of this window is regressing, curling backwards in time.

He wants to take a picture and capture this moment. His camera is in the other room and he briefly contemplates going to get it. Finally, he decides against it. Photographs have been falling short for him recently; he can't get them to show everything he sees. Maybe that's where the music comes in.

A breeze floats through the open window, as light as breath on the back of his neck. Tom is distracted as Nick slowly extends an arm towards him. Nick reaches out and rubs his thumb along Tom's collarbone. Tom recognizes it as an idle gesture; a spark of action borne out of boredom. Nick tugs at Tom's shirt and the first button pops undone.

"Let's fuck," Nick says, still holding on to Tom's collar. It's not a non sequitur, it's just Nick being Nick; demanding things and taking them; showing Tom how to do the same.

 

When he was fifteen, Tom cut class to go hang out with a guy he met on the internet. It was a pretty stupid thing to do, but he was fifteen and stupidity felt synonymous with excitement. They talked about music—really _talked_, in a way that Tom had never talked about music, as if it were a feeling in your gut, like hunger or love. They walked for a long time, side by side, scuffing the sidewalk with worn sneakers. They walked through parts of the city Tom had seen a thousand times and parts he'd never seen. It all felt new, somehow. They bought popsicles and then licked their fingers clean, savoring the sweet, synthetic taste. Tom dropped his popsicle stick in the gutter, but Nick held on to his and spent the rest of the afternoon chewing at it idly, leaving toothy indentations in the wood. (These days, Tom never throws away popsicles sticks. He fits them inside his mouth spends hours worrying at them with his teeth, just like Nick.)

From then on, ditching school to hang out with Nick became his favourite part of the day. They walked the streets, or found a patch of grass to lie on and stare at cloud formations. Most afternoons, they finished up at Tom's house, banging out melodies or finding other things to do with their hands. They slipped into friendship effortlessly, like toddlers dumped into the same playpen. Except, instead of building blocks, they had instruments, and instead of _goo goo ga ga_, they communicated in chord progressions.

 

They end up on the couch, because the heat has short-circuited their brains into laziness and the bedroom feels far away. It is also, Tom's mind realizes dimly, a reassuringly familiar manoeuvre. Nick has always recognized making music as an excellent form of foreplay. They have made out, fooled around and fucked on a dozen or more couches over the years—first, and most memorably, on the couch in his parents' basement. Memories crowd his mind and Tom recalls the ghosts of former couches, their patterns and specific textures layering over the present moment.

The couch in the basement was blue and its fabric was rough against his exposed skin. The first time, Tom took it on his back like a girl. Gay sex, like everything else, is a learning curve, and until he learned more, the missionary position seemed the stance to adopt, even if an extra dick was a wildcard element. Tom remembers Nick rising above him, obviously petrified and with no clue as to what to do, but trying his best to fake it till he made it, because he was _Nick_ and fear was just another word for failure.

Now, Tom prefers to lie on his front. He lets his eyes drift half-closed and allows his other senses to take over. Nick doesn't need to fake his sexual confidence anymore, but—just as with the popsicle sticks—he's a fidgety lover. Tom savors the unseen movements of Nick's hands: the way he buries his fingers deep into Tom's hair and yanks slowly; the tremors of his fingertips against the back of Tom's neck; the way he palms the muscles of his solar plexus; pushing down hard as he is close to coming.

Nick's fingers are always best at the moment they push inside Tom's asshole. They used K-Y jelly as lube when they were fifteen, because that was all the corner store sold. Now, Nick likes to use some fancy stuff that smells like coconut—as if making his dick into a Piña Colada has been some life's ambition. Nonetheless, Nick's fingers are slick and smooth as they work inside him. Tom's senses are screaming as he anticipates penetration. He opens his eyes for a brief moment and the tan leather of the couch before him is a blur. He closes his eyes again and sees rough blue cotton. At last, Nick and his coconut dick push into his ass. Tom exhales and takes a moment to find the rhythm as Nick begins to thrust inside him.

Even through the sex daze, Tom can still hear that melody inside his head. If anything, it's louder now, more insistent. He wonders what the final song will sound like; what story those notes will lay bare.


End file.
